I was sitting in the bar at the Ritz in Madrid. My friend S. ordered the wine. I was telling S. about some urgent thing – whatever it was, the sound of English alerted two older British ladies at the bar..

They were from the middle of England, they said, near Stratford-upon-Avon.

“Oh, I’ve been there,” I said. “I saw Kenneth Branagh in Hamlet.”

“You saw that?” said the older of the two older women. “What did you think?”

“I thought it was wonderful.”

“Wonderful” was lame, but they were strangers, and who knew what kind of discussion they wanted to be dragged in to. The production in fact was so powerful that it fragmented all my other memories of Stratford-upon-Avon, so that I only retain small snapshot visuals of everything that was not the play – a guy who asked me if I agreed that his British accent would score him chicks when he visited the States, the landlady at my B&B, The Dylan (named after Bob and not, as I had hoped, Thomas), telling me she had never been to the theater but hoped to go one of these days.

These are a Kodak slideshow in my mind. I know that memory behaves that way when cushioning the recollection of a trauma – news of a death, a sudden violent event. But this was merely theater, and I should be better able to recollect what else I did in Stratford-upon-Avon except attend Hamlet. But perhaps it was a trauma, that kind of production, that kind of performance, the immediate connection, the gratifying recognition, the yes! Yes! This is how I always thought it should be!, because so little in life hits you that way, and very rarely theater, for heaven’s sake. Those moments of transcendence should dominated by the province of intimate physical contact --

-- but anyway, I was speaking to an older woman in the bar at the Ritz in Madrid. I said, “It was wonderful” and in response she leaned forward on the bar, supporting her weight with her forearm, her head thrust forward, her face scrunched tight with passionate opinion. I was certain she was about to tell me I was a moron (the British, after all, do hate success), that it was paint-by-numbers Shakespeare, that only a philistine American would be such a simpleton –

Instead, she breathed out one word: “Superb.”

We smiled. Friends! I had never met anyone, ever, who had seen that production and while it was different for her – since she lived in the area -- it was a nice moment of fraternity for both of us.

She and her friend chatted with S. and me – they were on their way to a ten-day tour of Costa Rica. “A special package deal. Because we’re elderly.” The deal included an option to drop off in Madrid for a couple of days for an extra €10. So they did. And why were S. and I in Madrid? It was February; flights were cheap; we’d never been. We all toasted one another – free spirits, culture vultures. Then the younger of the two older women asked, “Are you staying here?” meaning the Ritz.

I shook my head and coughed out an incredulous “No!” They smiled again, conspirators: neither were they. We just wanted to have a glass of wine at the hotel. So that when we came home, we could indulge in an anecdote that began: “I was sitting in a bar at the Ritz in Madrid …”

Labels: Shakespeare

posted by Elizabeth at 3:28 PM